PE fund Wilson & Hughes to pump in up to ₹1,000 crore to revive Cox & Kings and its sub-brands

“The funds will primarily be used for developing the technology part of the business, investing in skilled human capital, marketing and partnerships," Ramalingam Subramanian, president of Wilson and Hughes India and Cox & Kings, told Mint exclusively. The travel agency’s brand portfolio will be enhanced, its services expanded, and its market presence strengthened with offline stores.

The Singapore-based private equity firm acquired the 260-year-old travel company and about 200 sub-brands through the insolvency process in November 2024. Cox & Kings is expected to begin functioning in three to six months. It has already started soft operations.

Cox & Kings halted its services in 2019 due to financial difficulties. Wilson & Hughes confirmed that the acquisition is free from any of Cox & Kings’ past liabilities and is unrelated to its previous management. Subramanian did not disclose the amount spent on the acquisition.

This is Wilson & Hughes’ first investment in the travel sector, he said. In the past, the PE firm has invested in sectors such as fast-moving consumer goods, and cement.

As earlier, the revived Cox & Kings will focus on leisure and business travel. In its previous avatar, the company had franchised 20-25% of its work to mom-and-pop travel stores. This is also something that Wilson and Hughes will explore.

Leisure opportunity

"Our intent is to reduce the effort going into planning holidays, which includes not just long-haul but short-haul travel too," Subramanian said. "The opportunity for leisure travel is quite extensive now. India has changed in terms of travel since the pandemic and a lot of travellers are focused heavily on it now. Luxury group travel like Arctic expeditions and small-group around-the-world trips is also a new category we're seeing emerge out of Indian travellers. So that's something we will also be setting our sights on."

Before Cox & Kings shut down, its mainstay came from planning leisure holidays, which accounted for 70% of its business. Outbound travel to Europe from India was one of the hottest-selling itineraries. Inbound to India too, especially from the US and the UK, was strong and another big part of the company's business.

“When the NRIs would want to travel to India, Cox & Kings was the usual choice," he said.

Subramanian said corporate and business travel has also changed considerably in the past five years.

“As we are re-entering the business, corporate travel also needs more tech enablement. That's where we see a strong play as well. MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) and SMEs, which aren't getting the cost advantage, also need solutions which can be used. That's also where we see some opportunity," he said.

About 70% of the business earlier came from Indians living in the country and the remaining from overseas. In FY17, Cox & Kings had gross revenue of about ₹7,200 crore. It went into bankruptcy court in 2019 after it defaulted on payments of loans of close to ₹5,500 crore.

According to data from the World Travel and Tourism Council, tourism in India was expected to have contributed ₹16.5 trillion to the economy in 2023, which is 3.5% lower than in 2019. The sector is also said to have created over 1.6 million new jobs, almost recovering all the employment lost during the pandemic, bringing the total number of jobs in the travel and tourism sector to 39 million - equivalent to about one in every 13 workers in India.

International visitors to India were anticipated to spend ₹2 trillion, while domestic tourism expenditure was forecast to exceed ₹12.6 trillion.